Re: Powershell Studio 2012 Serial
Eduviges Gearlds
I tried this, adding this to the end of the functions, but still no show in help. I noticed when I expand the first region of the function, the commented block stating the synopsis also show this .Link syntax, but its commented out, but when I would add it to the end of the function and tested, still now show.
As I have shown you above, the help text is there and can be loaded by powershell. That is why I have shown you the help window. That help window is a part of the toolkit. It works by dot source-ing the Main.ps1 and then it gets help for each function with our link in it and displays them in the window.
You can use that window for now.
Not sure how PStudio is reading those entries. Maybe they changed something. You could try adding the Main script to your powershell profile or powershell psstudio profile if the program has it. This way it will execute the script on every launch, which should allow you read the help and use the functions.
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I have been using Powershell ISE for a long time and is very good software, its simple and not too much annoying stuff running in the background to be able to run the code you are writing. Microsoft has introduced Visual Studio Code which will also be available to write Powershell code, at the first start it was not specifically usable for powershell unless you would download extensions and it was not really simple at first sight, the next this was how to use Visual Studio Code and that was the same, so I had to search how to use it. In Powershell ISE you can just type in the code and enter F5 and you run the code and it is quick and easy but in Visual Studio Code is a different approach. The question is, should IT Admins prefer to use Visual Studio Code instead of Powershell ISE? Lets take a deeper look at Visual Studio Code and compare it. Im going to use just a simple code that displays a variable, here is the code :
This code will just output the text in the variable when running. But what if I do the same in Visual Studio Code. The first thing you need to do is to save a new file to a PS1 file and Visual Studio Code will then popup with a information box and recommends Powershell development extension, you will need to install, enable and restart the application. After restart you need to open the PS1 file again and type in the code. But now when you click on F5 nothing happens, well that is seems that you cannot run just one file, you need to open a whole folder, well that is a problem because if I wanted to do a quick test script this would not be a whole big project. I opened the folder in VSC and then I am able to open the file. I click on F5 but then it asks me what kind of environment this is, well I thought it would be at least this smart that it could detect the extensions of the file and know that it is Powershell. Anyways I select the Powershell and it pops up with an json file. This is getting pretty creepy because just to run this small code requires me to understand json and lots of stuff, but just breathe and continue. Next I clicked again on F5 and it came with a debug console but no output from my variable, hmm... what is going on. I just wanted to write a simple script and run it, why all this fuzz about. I started extensions again and searched if there could be any shell that it would run on so I just typed in powershell and there where 3 extensions but I did not have a clue what I should choose, codeshell, code runner and start any shell. I just started with the first one and installed, enabled and restarted VSC. I typed F5 again and it came up with an error that had something to do with the json file. I just deleted the vcode folder and tried again and it ran but still no output. I went to view and there was something called output, I selected it and tried to run it again but no variable output. This was getting frustrated the first few minutes and I was not quite sure if this would be the perfect development platform for powershell scripts and at this point I just wanted to quit VSC so I decided that I did not want to continue. I would rather recommend PowerShell Studio from Sapien Technologies rather trying to develop powershell script in VSC.
PowerShell ISE is more of an small toolkit like notepad for PowerShell but Visual Studio Code is more of an development platform with debugging, breakpoints and lots of neat features. My recommendation if you are writing a simple code that will only be used in few cased I would just use PowerShell ISE which is included free in the Windows platform. If you want to do deep Powershell development I would go PowerShell Studio and of course if you want to bring PowerShell and C# together I would then use Visual Studio Code or other similar alternatives, I would go the alternatives.
Beginning with Windows Vista, the administrator security token split with the standard user token. This means that to perform administrative tasks you must elevate (UAC). Each app that requires the administrator access token must prompt for consent. Using PowerShell Studio I can create my Winform and use an administrator manifest to prompt for elevation, and input either a RunAs account or specify an account to Impersonate as.
The problem however, is Windows evaluates manifests prior to RunAs or Impersonation. It will load the manifest before any code is executed, and if our user is a standard user, they will be prompted for administrative credentials. So to make this all work we need to first launch with RunAs or Impersonation and then launch a shell or form that has an admin manifest. Sapien has a great article that details the inner workings of this a bit better.
Below is the back-end code of a simple Windows form I am creating in Sapien PowerShell Studio. It will allow my end users, that have no admin rights on their machines, to reset the Print Spooler Service.
If I were to compile this as is and run it on a machine where the user is only a standard user, I can see that it will fail because Restart-Service requires an admin Shell to run. Restarting the print spooler is an administrative task.
So, In PowerShell studio I will go to the Packager Settings, and in Output settings, select the Run Mode to be Impersonate or RunAs and then enter the credentials. These credentials I specified are a service account that has enough local rights to perform the task I specified. (ex: If I want the form the reset the network stack it can be a member of the local network operators group instead of the local administrators). The credentials you specify in here are encrypted within the compiled executable.
Using the cmdlet Start-Process we can launch a administrative PowerShell instance in the background and slipstream our command to reset the spooler in there. Since we are running our program as an administrator, when it prompts us with UAC to get the admin security token, we can simply approve it.
My name is Bradley Wyatt; I am a 4x Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Cloud and Datacenter Management. I have given talks at many different conferences, user groups, and companies throughout the United States ranging from PowerShell to DevOps Security best practices and am the 2022 North American Outstanding Contribution to the Microsoft Community winner.
Nice article, makes me wonder if I can use (part of) the code to start an application that needs elevated rights.
I am working for a school and a teacher wants his students to use two applications which need elevated rights to run.
We are using Microsoft SCCM to deploy Software. Each Software package is created as an application in SCCM.
The package itself is using the (ingenious) AppDeployToolkit, so Visual Studio gets installed via PowerShell.
It even doesnt matter if i use PSADT or a simple PowerShell prompt to enter the command (as Start-Process [...] -wait -passthru). Its the same Problem in both cases.
If i create a batch file to execute the vs.exe and call the batch file from PSADTK, the cmd window gets closed after the installation and even is giving me a return code, but the powershell script is still staying open.
There is a process named "xgTrayIcon" which gets started during the installation of VS. As soon as that process gets killed, the installation of VS will finish.
The powershell commandlet "Start-Process" ... -wait -passthru is always waiting for the property ".HasExited" to become true. This is only the case if the process xgTrayIcon gets killed.
Before starting the Installation of VS i call a separate script which first waits until the Installation begins (process VS running), second waits until the process VS is not running anymore (installation finished) and then kills the process xgTrayIcon. I am not waiting for the completion of the script so it is doing its Job in the Background. So as soon as the Installation has finished the xgTrayicon gets killed, the property ".HasExited" becomes true, i get my return code and the script continues...
The "workloads" installer screen you showed in your question is from Visual Studio. There is no out-of-box support for powershell projects in Visual Studio. however you can add project templates for powershell using marketplace extensions like this one if you so choose. I believe this is the direct answer to your question as it is asked. That said, Visual studio is probably not an environment I would choose to use for powershell specifically, simply because with the exception of Azure-centric development, i don't think it brings much to the table that isn't present in lighter tools.
The standard editor for Powershell development is the Powershell ISE. This free (and built-in) software provides many features that can assist in powershell development. the ISE is a great scratch pad, and is good for developing a small handful of script files. It does not however have a gui version control integration (at least not that I can find. you could always use git cli though).
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